Fountain Quail, Layne Christensen Join Forces to Treat Marcellus
Shale Flowback Water
Pittsburgh Business Times
14 January 2011
By Anya Litvak
Texas-based water treatment firm Fountain Quail and Kansas-based
drilling and construction company Layne Christensen are joining forces
in Pennsylvania to treat flowback water from natural gas wells drilled
in the Marcellus Shale. The two companies hope that by teaming up, they
can offer clients a suite of progressively more intense water treatment
options, from simple solids removal to distilled water.
Brent Halldorson, Fountain’s COO who describes his company’s
competition in the Marcellus Shale as “a David and Goliath contest,”
said Fountain is working on the same problems as engineering behemoths.
A partnership with Layne will give it the same range as some of the
larger players, he said.
The company is one of a string of water treatment firms trying to
capitalize on the enormous water processing needs of shale development.
According to H2Opportunities, a new economic analysis about
southwestern Pennsylvania’s water businesses, Marcellus challenges will
continue to attract such firms to the area.
“Drilling companies are always looking for more efficient ways to use
water as well as store, treat or dispose of the wastewater.
Advances that reduce the water used in the hydro-fracturing process or
which increase the productivity of the water used are highly desired
and critical to our region’s sustainable development,” the report
states.
A small, U.S.-based subsidiary of Canadian firm Aqua Pure, Fountain has
been working to treat water in the Barnett Shale in Texas for the past
six years. There, as well as in the younger Marcellus Shale play,
“we’re competing with GE and Siemens and some of the biggest companies
in the world,” Halldorson said.
To give itself leverage without “diluting ourselves,” the company
forged a business alliance with Layne Christensen (NASDAQ:LAYN), a firm
with more than 4,000 employees worldwide and annual revenue of around
$880 million for fiscal year 2010. The two firms will market each
others’ products in pitches to Marcellus Shale operators, when the
combination makes sense.
Layne is in the process of establishing a presence in southwestern
Pennsylvania, according to Greg Aluce, president of the firm’s water
technologies group. The company has zeroed in on the Canonsburg area as
a site for a small sales office and will be looking for office/machine
shop space on the outskirts of the city in the next several months for
its operations team.
Aluce could not say how many employees the new offices will have.
“We’re getting ourselves established in the Pittsburgh area, putting
our boots on the ground,” he said, “and just in general, we’re excited
about the Marcellus.”
SYNERGY
Fountain Quail made its entrance into Pennsylvania in partnership with
Eureka Resources, which last summer expanded its wastewater treatment
facility in Williamsport and appropriated Fountain Quail’s purification
process for frac water.
Around the same time, Layne Christensen bought Texas water purification
company Intevras Technologies, which also was working to treat flowback
brine.
Layne’s first few contracts to treat and transport Marcellus Shale
flowback water are just starting up, Aluce said, with producers in the
northeastern part of the state.
While some companies may not need their flowback water treated to a
high standard in order to reuse it in future fracing, advanced
treatments like Fountain Quail’s technology are useful where
transporting wastewater through mountainous terrain or large distances
makes water recycling too expensive, according to Matt Pitzarella, a
spokesman for Range Resources. In those instances, in order to
discharge the treated water, it would have to be brought up to a
drinking water standard — that is, total dissolved solids
concentrations below 500 parts per million and chlorides below 250
parts per million.
Range Resources, one of the most active drillers in the state, has used
Fountain Quail’s technology in Williamsport. “The only waste is a
highly concentrated brine, which is taken to disposal wells, some in
Pennsylvania and most in Ohio,” said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for
Range. “This is a water treatment technology that would have never
existed without the Marcellus industry.”
alitvak@bizjournals.com | (412) 208-3824